Resource Representations in GENI:A path forward

Ilia Baldine, Yufeng Xin

ibaldin@renci.org, yxin@renci.org

Renaissance Computing Institute, UNC-CH

Slicing of a network

Link slivering

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Agreements – resource representation cycle

Possibly fuzzy request

More specific request to substrate provider(s)

Detailed manifest fromsubstrate provider

Collective possibly filtered manifest

Ads from substrate providers

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PG Rspec V1

GENI Resource representation mechanisms

• ‘Traditional’ Network resources– Ethernet links, tunnels, vlans

• Edge compute/storage resources• Measurement resources

– Including collected measurement data objects

• Wireless resources– WiFi, WiMax, motes etc

• Lack of agreement on what resources represent will be a significant impediment to interoperability

• Agreement on a format is important, but can be dealt with on the engineering level

PL RSpec PG Rspec V2 ORCA NDL-OWL OMF

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Network resources

• Key distinctions– Number of layers– Describing adaptations

between layers– Syntax– Tools

PL

PG

NDL-OWL

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Aside: why adaptations are critical?• Network adaptations are part of the description of stitching

capability• Needed for properly computing paths between aggregates

connected by network providers at different layers– E.g. if a host has an interface that has an Ethernet to VLAN

adaptation, this interface is capable of stitching to vlans– Consistent way to describe connectivity across layers (tunnels,

DWDM, optical)

• Also– Important for matching requests to substrate capabilities

• E.g. creating a VM is a process of ‘adaptation’ of real hardware to virtualization layer

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Network resources: a practical solution

• Stay primarily within Ethernet layer• Accept one format to be used between control

frameworks• Perform bi-directional format conversion

– Only partial may be possible

• Hosted services that perform conversion on demand– E.g. NS2/RSpec v1 and v2 request converter to NDL-OWL– http://geni-test.renci.org:11080/ndl_conversion/request.jsp

• Works well for several types of links, nodes, interfaces, ip addresses and simple link attributes

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Agreeing on wire format

• RSpec v2 with extensions is a viable possibility• Conversion from RSpec v2 is relatively

straightforward pending agreement on edge resources

• Conversion to RSpec v2 is likely to be partial but probably sufficient for the time being– Nothing below Layer2 is visible to experimenter

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Next challenge: Edge compute resources

• Ads:– Aggregates can produce (adapt to) different types of nodes– E.g. PL VServer, PG bare hardware node types, ORCA’s

Xen/KVM virtual machines (and hardware nodes)– Constraints are possible on disk, memory size, number and type

of CPU cores– Properties may include location, ownership etc.– Note: internal topology may or may not be part of the site ad. E.g.

clouds have no inherent topology that needs to be advertized

• Requests:– Based on constraints on type of node, disk, memory size, core

type and count, location

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Advertising edge resources

• A server can be an individual node or a cloud of servers• A site may choose to advertise individual servers/nodes

or server clouds– Clouds have no inherent topology, just constraints on the type

of topology they can produce and adaptations for nodes

• Servers/nodes or server clouds are adaptable to different types of nodes distinguished by– Virtualization (Xen, KVM, VServer, None etc)– Possibly memory, disk sizes, core types and counts, OS

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Requesting edge resources

• A request for a node specifies multiple constraints on that node– Type of virtualization preferred– Memory, disk size– CPU Type– Core count– OS

• Allows policy to pick best sites based on request and resource availability.

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Semantic Shortcut examples

• Semantic shortcuts– PL node

• Virtualiztion: Vserver

– Simple PG node• Virtualization: None• CPU type: x86 or ?? or ??

– EC2M1Small• Virtualization: KVM or XEN• CPU count: 1• Memory size: 128M

– EC2M1Large• Virtualization: KVM or XEN• CPU count: 2• Memory size: 512M

– PlanetLabCluster• Produces PL Nodes

– ProtoGeniCluster• Produces PG nodes

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Other considerations

• Emerging standards:– OVF – portable appliance images across

heterogeneous environments– CF should be able to generate OVF based on

combination of request data and substrate information

• Higher-level programming environments:– Google App Engine, AppScale– Distributed map/reduce– …

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Next steps

• Align edge compute resource descriptions• Enable conversion as a GENI-wide service• Test full interoperation PG<->ORCA by GEC11• Get the conversation started on aligning

abstraction models for for – Wireless resources

• Max Ott, Hongwei Zhang, ?

– Storage (physical and cloud)• Mike Zink, ?